Earlier this year, the founders of The Big Exchange attended a business development and funding discussion meeting at the East Lancashire chamber of commerce based in Preston. The meeting was to discuss the mobile application and future development and revenue-generating opportunities, the meeting was attended by founders Duncan Edward Webb and Paul Gray alongside Norman Tenray who is the immediate past President and Non-exec Board Director of the North & Western Lancashire Chamber of Commerce, an Entrepreneur in Residence at Lancaster University, Chair of the Lancashire Economics Policy Group, Chair of the NWLCC Remuneration Committee and Chair of Trustees for Age Concern Central Lancashire, Norman also sits on the North West advisory committee for the bank of England.
The meeting was arranged to discuss finance opportunities, investment opportunities, and further development of the Big Exchange app. During the discussion, some good points were raised about the education of the general public on the value of their data. A strategy has to be developed to build awareness surrounding personal information, digital advertisements, and GDPR laws in general. Within the meeting, valid topics of business revenue were discussed and the opportunity to segment our approach and zone in on certain industries to capitalise on our advertising efforts and achieve steady growth and revenue stream, skimming the business and creating a dating-only data advertising platform offering access to personal information our users have uploaded on a subscription basis to organisations offering dating services. This way The BE could benefit from a subscription-based revenue model.
Access to finance was discussed, with some good points on how to raise equity, how to raise capital, how to access start-up funding and Government grant schemes, but, how most importantly a solid exit strategy and financial assumption would have to be agreed upon, not only by the founders but by executives and non-executives within and without the organisation. Following the meeting at the East Lancashire Chamber of Commerce, a financial prediction for The Big Exchange over the next 5 years was shared with accountants, managing directors and other qualified people in order to add to the business proposal for when the time comes that The Big Exchange will need to show this to investors to raise funding.
All in all the meeting allowed the founders to see more opportunities in terms of seeking funding and, increasing the revenue for users generated from their app.